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June 05, 2007

Today, I spent a few minutes cleaning out my email inbox. And I noticed a problem.

I had overlooked a few personal emails... some nearly a year old! I'll explain why in a moment.

But first, have you ever subscribed to someone's emails, only to stop reading them after a few months?

You don't want to unsubscribe because you're afraid you might miss something. But you also don't have the time (or interest) to read every message the person sends.

I've done this quite a few times. Maybe you can relate?

Most of the time I simply look at who sent the email and decide whether to open it or not. If it's somebody who sends me a lot of commercial email, I usually don't open it.

Here's where the problem happens: When the sender uses the same exact name for both personal and commercial email.

It would be like me sending a personal email from "Ryan Healy"--and all my commercial email too!

Which, by the way, I have been doing for quite some time. So I apologize if it's been difficult to tell personal email apart from business email. That's my fault.

From now on, my broadcast emails will come from "On Copywriting." My personal emails will continue to come from "Ryan Healy." This should avoid any confusion between the two.

So back to the start of my story.

The emails I missed happened to be from people who send me about one or two personal emails for every 50 broadcast emails--and the "From" line says the same thing no matter what. So it's no wonder I overlooked them.

If you have an email list, consider differentiating "who" sends your personal and commercial email. That way your personal email will actually get read.